


Amicus

by Ruby_Wednesday



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Bonding, Gen, Post-Kings Rising, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 16:04:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7851835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruby_Wednesday/pseuds/Ruby_Wednesday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jord's too hot to sleep and very alone in this palace.</p><p>For Captive Prince Week Day Three and the prompt <i>friendship</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Amicus

**Author's Note:**

> Amicus - from Latin meaning friend or comrade

Friendship

 

Ios is too hot. Jord can think that. It’s true. But he does not speak it aloud, ever, because most things he has said about Ios have so far been interpreted as an insult against this glorious Akielon land. Jord is too hot to get into a duel of honour with some offended Akielon soldier. Jord is too tired to figure out how people can feel so strongly about abstract, uncontrollable things like temperature and cliffs. 

He can understand pride taken in your country’s royal family and all they might have achieved. He understands why Akielons distrust Veretians. He understands why they have felt the pain of their king as if it happened to their own selves. To enslave a king is to enslave a country. The man Jord knew as Damen, was the pride and joy of this place. He can’t imagine what they would do if they knew of the beatings Jord himself had doled out to defend Laurent’s honour. 

So he understands patriotism. He even understands pain, because the sight of his prince in shackles in the Akielon palace had hurt him to his core. He told himself he had never felt a blow like that before but that was a lie. There was worse pain, the kind that started with ego and melded into the fluttering potential of romance until it splintered into the ugliest of messes. A pain he did not think of, only to chide himself, until Aimeric’s mother spoke his name at the trial.

It’s too hot to sleep in Ios. Jord keeps thinking about painful things. The loss of that boy with the curly hair and the haughty mouth that softened at Jord’s attention. Softer men might say Aimeric had been a budding wildflower, trampled underfoot before he ever got to bloom. Jord is a career soldier. He is not soft. He thinks of how foolish he was to get swindled by a meddling aristocrat. He thinks of Orlant, who died for nothing.

Orlant had been his friend. Orlant had showed him the ropes in Arles, when the complications of court seemed like a knot he would never untangle and the shockingly beautiful boy prince had seemed he could cut Jord to pieces with a few choice words. 

If Orlant was here in Ios, they could joke about the surprisingly luxurious rooms Jord had been assigned. They could complain about everyone and everything in rough, straightforward language and Jord could relax.

He can’t relax, no matter what the new King says. He is a foreign soldier in a foreign palace. He’s not like Lazar, who’s always really been too bold for Jord to understand, who gladly makes use of his assigned chambers with the Akeilon boy Pallas. 

It’s too hot.

There’s too many hurting thoughts in his head.

He sweeps away the thin sheet covering his body and dresses in a hurry. Distraction, that’s what he needs. Wine, more wine, and maybe even a brothel. Jord prefers men, generally. Before Aimeric, he thought they were more straightforward. Ios is too hot but that has it’s own advantages, like eons of muscled flesh on display. If he wanted, he could have a woman. He could chat in the natural way and many women would be happy to go back to such a prime spot in the palace. He could walk freely into a brothel.

Those who stood by the new Kings in their mission against the usurpers are acknowledged and rewarded now the task is over. Jord has been by Laurent for many years and has hopefully regained some measure of trust in staying by his side. He chose, time and time again, to remain. Choices are important, under this new reign. It’s not without irony that Jord notes that at any other time a man like him would have been given a slave as a reward. There are no shortage of exquisite looking, perfectly trained slaves in the palace. He might even have enjoyed it — an uncomplicated exchange of pleasure.  
But those days are gone. 

Like any good soldier, Jord made it his business to learn the layout of the grand palace on the cliffs. Now, in the wee hours of the morning, he is glad for the ability to navigate the marble halls with certainty. Everything is white. Everything is simple. There aren’t any changes in colour or design to differentiate. A person could easily get lost here. 

Jord needs air. He is confident if he turns left, then right, then goes up those steps he will emerge onto a wide balcony overlooking the ocean. He craves the taste of salt and the smell of the night waves. He was given good wine with his evening meal and carries it now in a corked bottle.

He feels the breeze at his feet before he steps outside. A little pleased, that his instincts were correct.

Then, a huge blaze of regret engulfs him. He is not the only one here.

“Oh,” says Nikandros, flat as scrubland. “I see you have taken it upon yourself to explore the palace.”

Nikandros outranks Jord. Nikandros had held him back when the white soldiers approached from the Kingsmeet. Nikandros had shoved him back when Jord had challenged Damen about leaving Laurent behind. The journey to Ios after had been tense. There was some respect from him that Jord has always stayed loyal to his prince. But there was nothing more than that. There had been no reason for them to communicate since. Jord hadn’t seen any of the Akielons properly since.

Nikandros, as Kyros of Delpha, speaks very good Veretian. He speks in Veretian now, and the familiar language was nearly a comfort to Jord.

It would have been a balm, if the words weren’t laced with derision. 

“Excuse me,” Jord replies. “I didn’t know this area was out of bounds.”

A sigh. “Not so long ago every inch of this place was out of bounds to Veretians.”

“Long enough,” Jord says. “Kastor let us in first.”

“What has you out here?”

“Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t breathe. It’s too damn hot in this city, no offense.”

“I had grown too used to Delphan summers. They were cool, in comparison,” Nikandros says. “Stay if you want. It’s no skin off my nose.”

“It’s—” Jord stops himself. There’s no point deciphering local sayings. The air is cooler, here, and wine tastes better under the stars. He even leans against the marble ledge. “How is he?” 

“Healing well. Dispatching traitors and making loyal supporters love — oh, you mean Laurent?” A twitch of his lips. “The same as ever.”

“Cold, terrifying and unpredictable,” Jord supplies, taking a swig of his wine. That earns him a critical look from Nikandros.

“It’s fine,” he says. “The — I better call him the King now. He knows what we say. He cultivates it. That doesn’t take away from the other stuff. Look at all he’s done for your king.”

“Who gave you that piss wine?” Nikandros says, and maybe the look was not about Jord’s slight. “Toss it off the balcony. Here. Drink this instead.”

Jord sets down his bottle, and took what Nikandros offers with a probing look. He knows that among Akielons, to drink with someone was to approve of someone. Makedon had shown them that. 

“Thank you,” he says. This wine is much better. “A lowly soldier does not expect to get the same standard as the third most senior noble in Ios. You are the Kyros now, yes?”

“Not officially. But I am officially the Kryos of Delpha and the closest friend to the King. With all the shit that comes my way, I deserve the best fucking wine on the peninsula.” Nikandros’s words make Jord smile in the darkness. He is different when the Kings are not around. More like someone Jord could speak to. “I heard you were Captain all through frantic manourvres near the border. That calls for good wine too.”

“A stand in,” Jord says. “After Govart. Not when it mattered.”

“Nonsense. Your loyalty and bravery is well known even here. I am sure the King of Vere will have an official role for —”

“Damen was Captain for every battle we won. It was his suggestions that came from Laurent’s lips that got the troops in order,” Jord interrupts. “Chances are, I’ll be turned off once Laurent has more people he can trust.” He expects the admission will revert the newly amiable Nikandros back to wariness. Nikandros values honesty and honour and good soldiering and, well, Jord’s not sure if he falls under those categories any more.

“You all call him Damen,” Nikandros says. That’s not what Jord expected. 

“I enquired, you know, after the first…presentation. It seemed so cruel, even in the Veretian court, to do that to the prince.”

“Your prince. That’s the cruelty you worried about.”

“Yes, of course. The handlers had it along the grapevine. The suggestion came from Kastor, via the Lady Jokaste.”

“I can count on one hand the number of people close enough to call the King Damen,” Nikandros says. “It’s …” He hesitated, searching for the word. “A diminutive, left since childhood. I wonder if it it hurt him more or less to have you all use it.”

“You should have heard the chants.” Jord tries to salvage this. “When he won Hellay. It might have been nice for him. But —” He remembers he’s talking about a king not a slave. “It is not for me speculate. The prince never said it, though. Never.” Well, not in public anyway. Jord can imagine that a great many things went on between the kings in public that are not up for speculation. 

“You have a nick name?” 

Not since he hid behind his mother’s skirts. Little soldier, she called him, when he pranced up and down the flagstone kitchen floor with a broomstick tied to his waist. “Jord is short enough.”

“They called me Nik, when I trained at the Kingsmeet.” The wine bottle is getting lighter. “We were all the same there. Not level, exactly, but equally prestigious.”

Jord thinks that sounds a bit like being in the Prince’s Guard. As a boy, that was the highest position he ever hoped to achieve. He remembers the keep at Acquitart, positively quaint in comparison with the luxuries of the forts they subsequently took, and the transgressive thrill of the canopied bed and Aimeric’s fine undergarments beneath his soldier’s garb. 

“I saw the respect when they brought your king back that day.” Jord tries for mutual ground. He understands soldiering better than revelations.

“He was my friend,” Nikandros continues. “Still is, but…I mourned for him. I berated myself for not fighting harder to get him to see the truth of Kastor’s character. And because of some ingrained notion of loyalty, I stood at the Kingsmeet and watched the traitor brother crowned. He was my friend. They say the cuffs hurt the whole country but how can that be true? He wasn’t their friend.”

The bottle, Jord notes, is down to the dregs.

Nikandros passes a hand over his face. His stance is not quite steady. 

Jord considers what to say, or if this is one of those times when it is best to keep mum. 

“I don’t know why Laurent was cruel to you,” Jord says, out of nowhere. “Him, I understood. But …he was testing and it was wrong.”

“I never thought you would say anything bad about him.”

“That was mild, believe me.”

“I was mourning. He was …I heard those fireside stories. Brothels, rooftops and grand victories.”

“I guess they never told you about the Vaskian clans and the coupling fires,” Jord said. He had been to Acquitart with Laurent several times. He knew the customs in the mountains. 

“I don’t even want to know.” 

Jord shrugged. “I could tell you about the bad shit.” The words spring out like arrows from the archers line in battle. “Like the beatings. I administered a few myself when we thought he was just an unruly slave. Or the arena in Arles. Or …” Maybe this was a bad idea. Definitely this line of conversation was a bad idea.Nikandros tenses, poised to fight. Jord has no weapon here and he is much much smaller. “The boy Nicaise stabbed him with a fork. But, honestly, I think even your king would get a laugh out of that now.”

“Who did you lose?” Nikandros says, still tense, and these words are their own kind of attack. The Akielon Kyros is more astute than his friend King, that’s for sure.

“Nobody.”

“You’re not naturally mean.”

Jord doesn’t really know what he is, these days. When your identity is crafted around being a soldier, you tend to lose all sense of yourself. He was naive back in Nesson and beyond, which was nothing any Veretian would admit. He is hollow some days, desperate others. He has spent hours convincing himself it was real, than hours more berating himself for that waste of time. He’s not cut out for games and manipulation. 

“You heard his mother at the trial,” Jord says, eventually. The good bottle is empty now. “Aimeric. But he was never mine to lose.”

“I think,” Nikandros replies. “That is up to you.”

 _I’m sorry, Jord._  
Not his parents, not the prince. Not even that puppet master Regent.

Jord looks out over the cliffs. It’s a long way down. 

The higher you go, the harder the fall.

“You would have hated him,” Jord says. “All of you. He picked fights, uprisings and weaknesses. He told everyone in the troop that your king was wrung out from a night fucking Laurent, when that was not the case at all.”

“How typically Veretian,” Nikandros replies. “I don’t know why I invited you to drink with me.”

“Because I had the good sense not to throw the inferior wine off the balcony.” Jord offers it over, before he takes a drink for himself. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for my part in it.”

“It’s always those who do least wrong that easily apologise.” He hands the bottle back. “Hey, what do you call a Veretian with two faces?”

Jord has heard this one before. “A Veretian,” he replies. “Where do Patrans sit most comfortable?”

“Where?”

“A fence,” Jord says and Nikandros lets out a bark of a laugh. 

“How many Vaskian men does it take to build a wall?” Nikandros ventures. 

“How many?” Jord takes another drink. It’s remarkably easy to breathe now. 

“I don’t know. You make them lie down one on top of the other until the Empress says the wall is high enough.”

“Ouch,” says Jord, through his laughter.

“Come on. They don’t even try up there,” Nikandros says. It’s not even that funny. But it is because of wine, and the end of fighting, and both their kings safe and alive and working for a better future for both their countries. “What do you call an Akielon general with no war to fight?”

“Dead,” says Jord, because he’s heard that one before too.

But that’s not the answer in his head. That’s not it at all.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! another hastily written piece that i hope you like <3


End file.
